MGMAT CAT Question

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MGMAT CAT Question

by mdavidm_531 » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:37 am
According to a recent magazine article, of those office employees who typically work 8 hours at the office each day but sometimes say that they will work at home on a particular day, 25 percent actually work less than one hour. At the same time, over 90 percent of those same office employees believe they are more productive working at home than working in their office.

The statements above, if true, best support which of the following conclusions about the office employees discussed in the article?

(A) On average, the office employees working at home for a day work fewer hours than office employees working at the office.

(B) 10 percent of the office employees are less productive working from home than working in their office.

(C) At least 15 percent of the office employees do not define productivity exclusively in terms of the number of hours worked.

(D) At least 25 percent of the office employees can complete the same amount of work in one hour at home as in 8 hours at the office.

(E) Some of the office employees make statements regarding their productivity that are not in fact true.
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

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by bubbliiiiiiii » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:57 am
IMO B
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by Frankenstein » Tue Jul 12, 2011 1:28 am
Hi,
I just checked MGMAT solution for this. By 25% of those employees, they mean 25% of the total employees only and not 25% of 90%(which I have considered). So, they have solved this as a Venn diagram(sets) problem.
I will just paste their solution.
"90 percent of the office employees believe that they are more productive at home than at work. At the same time, 25 percent of the office employees actually work fewer hours when they work at home than when they work at the office. The overlap between these two groups is at least 15 percent of all of the office employees. This group of employees believes that they are more productive at home than at work and yet this group actually works fewer hours at home than at work. Thus, these employees must not define productivity exclusively in terms of the number of hours worked. "

Hence, C
Last edited by Frankenstein on Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by mdavidm_531 » Tue Jul 12, 2011 2:02 am
Frankenstein wrote:Hi,
25% of employees work less than 1 hour at home while they work for 8 hours at office.
Of these, 90% believe they are more productive working at home less than 1hour than working 8 hours.
So, this share is 90% of 25 = 22.5%
C addresses this by saying at least 15% do not define productivity in terms of number of hours.

Hence, C
You're correct.

However, don't you think there's a problem with the wording of the stimulus? At first I thought that it was like a "double-matrix" question in which there are four events: 1) Those who work less than one hour at home (25%), 2) Those who work more than one hour at home (75% - use of complementary), 3) Those who think that they're more productive at home (90%), and 4) Those who think that they're more productive at the office (10% - again, use of complementary).

That's what I thought at first.

Now, the correct answer pivots on the idea that out of the 95% of 25% of the employees think that they're more productive at home than in the office. As you calculated, that equates to 22.5%. Letter C becomes tricky because it says AT LEAST 15%. So that's the breaking point right there, isn't it? :) C requires intuitive thinking because it INFERS that # of hours and productive ARE NOT correlated.

Is my thinking making any sense? :)

All the best,
Dave

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by bubbliiiiiiii » Tue Jul 12, 2011 2:06 am
that out of the 95% of 25% of the employees
Even I didnot think as given above. Instead, I put it up as 25% and 95% of 100% of employees.

Anyways, great Frank.

Now I am tensed on these type of questions. Frank, Can you share some notes on the way we have to solve this?
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by Frankenstein » Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:49 am
Hi,
I have made a mistake in my previous post. I have checked MGMAT solution. So, I have edited it so that my post doesn't misguide viewers.
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